


Blood Borne

by DustToDust



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2067237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustToDust/pseuds/DustToDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been an open and shut case. The killers were seen shooting the victim and were in jail waiting to be charged. Simple, up until an unknown blood drop on the victim was paternally linked to the Joker. A witch hunt is about to begin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Like most things in Gotham, by the time they’re told about the lab report it’s too late for them to do anything to prevent the situation from roaring out of control.

Tim hears about it through Babs first as he’s making his way through an active night of knocking heads together. Gang activity has picked up in his turf and he’s playing catch up as two groups try to kill each other over some insult that none of the people he’s ‘talked’ to can even agree on happening. Normally, Tim would file Babs’ little heads up for latter investigation, but this isn’t a normal heads up.

"The Joker?" Tim asks after swinging up onto the tallest building in the block he’s on. Less chance of being interrupted. "Are you sure?"

"As sure as we can be without the report or blood sample," Babs sounds tired and Tim wonders how long she’s known about this. How far along Bruce is with his investigation, and what he’s dropping to chase this down. "The lab tech destroyed it all as soon as she figured out what she had. It’s bought us some time, but…."

But it prevents them from checking for themselves the veracity of the claim. Frustrating but Tim knows it was probably necessary. If that report had been filed the way it was supposed to the entire city would be in an uproar right now, and some mole or entrepreneurial cop in the force would have sold all the information and DNA profile to the highest bidder. There’s going to be a witch hunt, Tim knows that because this is _Gotham_ , but they have some lead time to try and head it off now at least.

"I’ll meet up with B," Tim says, and doesn’t ask where he is. He’s at the GCPD precinct lab. Looking for anything that might have been overlooked and probably scaring the entire shift working there. Out of all of the GCPD, the lab techs are the ones who have seen Batman the least, and they really don’t know how to handle him.

Gunshots ring out in the night and Tim forces himself to ignore the call of more heads that need a hard kick as he sets off. Flying through the air and listening to Babs’ voice slide back into the mechanical range as she confirms his suspicions. “Be careful.”

The warning is standard whenever they deal with anything having to do with the Joker. Tim resists the urge to ask for an update on the man’s status in Arkham. It would have been the first thing Babs checked, and the second thing she would have told him. “I will. It’s not like we’re dealing with the Joker himself here though.”

"Just his kid," Oracle says, and the reproach is obvious in the voice. "We _don’t_ know what we’re dealing with here RR."

"Noted," Tim replies and is left alone to run halfway across the city to see what he can help find out about this unknown complication.


	2. Chapter 2

There's nothing physical to be found. Tim knows that from the set of Bruce's mouth and the tension in his shoulders. Batman doesn't like operating on the words of a single person. He doesn't trust anyone that much, not even someone in the GCPD. _Especially_ not the police sometimes. 

"What do we have?" Tim asks because it always helps to remind Bruce that he's not alone. Subtle, verbal cues that Tim's picked up from Alfred to try and shake him of his terrible habit of trying to run cases dealing with Joker alone. 

If Bruce is aware of everyone's attempt to interfere he doesn't show it as he turns. "Very little."

"Do we at least know where the sample came from?" Tim leans against the high wall that edges the precincts roof and looks at the dark beacon light that was reluctantly placed back on the roof. It hasn't been used in over a month though. Stubbornness warring with the fact that Batman really is needed in Gotham. "We might be able to return to the scene."

"I was hoping you could tell me that," Bruce tilts his head slightly, but Tim doesn't catch the communication happening before he turns to face Tim. "The street shootout from last week. On Wellington."

Tim blinks and knows Bruce catches it through the cowl. The shooting on Wellington _is_ something he knows all about, but not as Red Robin. Tim Drake had been present when an argument got out of hand and a gun got waved around starting a fight that left one man dead.

He'd been walking behind Damian and Colin after a surprisingly successful trip to the zoo that didn't actually end in the maiming Damian had been promising. Colin's influence no doubt. The other boy had been pretty happy to see most of the zoo. Minus the smaller enclosures and the dark ones reserved for the bats of course.

Tim had been trying to figure out how to relate the day back to Dick in a way that wouldn't make the man unbearably smug when the crowd they'd been walking in panicked and he was thrown face first into a brick wall. After that he was too busy trying to manage the bystanders without appearing to actually be doing anything to worry about what Dick was going to say. Damian had managed to bag a few of the more vicious ones before the fight was over, and Tim was trying to pull the boy away from where the cameras were starting to gather as one body on the street didn't get up.

"No, I doubt there's anything left," it's rained a few days since that incident, and he doubts there really would be anything left so close to the orphanage. The area was surprisingly good about keeping the children safe. "The sample was found from there?"

"On the murdered man's shoes," Bruce confirms and Tim frowns as he tries to recall all the names that ended up getting connected to the case. Most of them had been apprehended, and released within a few days. Two men are still in jail pending trial for murder though. 

Tim doubts any of them are the source of DNA. They're already mostly in the system as it is. "How did they find the match anyway? Testing DNA for paternity isn't exactly standard procedure."

"The blood came back unknown and the tech decided to be _proactive_ ," Tim snorts and Bruce's lips quirk up in responding amusement. A paternity test might help narrow a search, but the courts wouldn't like it too much. Not without the proper warrant first. Good initiative, but lacking in long term benefits. The smile dies fast. "The news is already starting to spread."

"Someone talked," Tim guesses because gossip spreads faster in the police rank than anything else. "The city will hear it soon then."

"Before the sun rises," Bruce confirms. A shorter estimate than Tim would go with, but he usually has a better idea on information spread. "You need to start tracking down anyone that was there that day. We need to find who this person is."

Because while the GCPD might not have DNA on all of the gang members involved, the computer in the Cave _does_ , and someone would have started that search immediately. "I'll see what I can find. Is Robin-"

"At the Cave," Bruce says, and that's a bit of a shame. Dick had worked hard to get the boy to agree to another weekend with the Teen Titans. The Titans might be relieved, but Dick will complain for a week about it. To Tim, because no one else really listens to his griping about socializing Damian anymore. "He's running some searches and pulling names."

He'll also be better suited to pulling Colin in on this. The other boy is going to be their best bet to identify anyone on the street that day. "I'll meet up with him later. See if we both have the same recollection of the event."

Bruce doesn't respond, just goes up to the wall and sets one foot up on it. Leaning forward, but he's looking down and not out at the city. There's still somethings he wants to chase down in the precinct. Maybe some known moles to shake up to try and buy them more time. "Breakfast," he says before he's a blur of silent shadows.

"Sure," Tim tells the empty air. Not feeling resentful over the order to meet, because he has a feeling he's going to need some of Alfred's coffee in a few hours.


	3. Chapter 3

Devon Fields is a freelance photographer who makes most of his money as a courier. It makes him mobile and gives him chances to shoot pictures at all sort of incidents while still having a fairly steady paycheck.

Tim doesn’t bother rousing the snoring man who fell asleep watching Star Wars on his couch. The last thing he wants to do right now is alert the man that he has some photos that are going to be worth a lot of money very soon. He remembers the man from that day, and doesn’t look for any physical copies. The man works with a digital camera and it only takes a few moments for Tim to hack his laptop.

Finding the files from that day take a little more time. Fields keeps them on a cloud storage, and Tim has to wade through a lot of randomly named files before finding what he’s looking for. He copies them over before erasing them. They’re worth a lot of money, but Fields seems fairly decent for a man in his profession and Tim doesn’t want to see him tangle with the people who will be offering money for potential pictures of the Joker’s son.

Tim stops by one of his safehouses to transfer the photos to his network and look at them on a larger screen.

Fields came in on the tail end of the incident. The murder already done, and most of the people involved scattered under the threat of police sirens. Which leaves just the shocked bystanders.

They’re good photos, and Tim smiles as he sends them off to Babs. The faces are all clear and unblurred. Perfect for the search programs of Oracle.

"Nice," Babs comments almost immediately through the comm line. "I don’t think I’ve seen these ones before."

"The man who took them isn’t very good at selling his shots," Tim says as he copies the photos over to send to the Cave. There were other photographers there, people who listened in on the police band, but their photos he already knows focused on the victim and the men in cuffs. Everyone else out of focus. "I think he likes taking them too much to cater to what the press wants."

"I’ll run these and see about getting some names to look into," Babs says, and Tim starts mentally preparing his excuse for not going into the office in the morning. They’re all going to be running leads into the ground. "Don’t you have somewhere to be?"

"I don’t have anything to report yet," Tim sighs and thinks about the open cases he has, the warring gangs in his territory, and Tam’s inevitable disapproving silence when he calls her at eight. It’s been three hours since Babs told him about the DNA hit, and Tim can already feel this case starting to spin out of control. It hasn’t even really _started_!

"Get donuts," Babs says with a laugh. "I’m stopping for bagels."

"You’re showing up?" Tim grins and immediately decides to ignore the looks he knows he’s going to get from Alfred for bringing food into his kitchen. Babs doesn’t visit the Manor often. For a variety of reasons, only some of which Tim feels confident enough to guess at. Her presence will divert most of Alfred’s unspoken ire at the intrusion of the donuts and their empty calories.

"Yes, anything involving the Joker tends to spiral out of control fast," Babs replies and there’s an echo to her voice that Tim knows come from a bluetooth headset instead of her normal setup. She’s already on the move, or getting ready to head out. "I’d rather we’re all on top of it now than playing catch up later."

Because catch up with the Joker tends to involve bombs and timers. Tim winces and goes for the stripped down bike he’s been working on in this safehouse. It’s serviceable, but there’s still a lot of things that need overhauling on it before he can use it on patrol. "We have the jump on him this time."

"We have twenty-four hours," Babs predicts grimly. "That's how long it's going to take some bright individual to let the news slip to him, and then Arkham is going to find out how very many holes in their security they have."

"Again," Tim pulls a helmet on and triggers the larger door open. The real draw of this safehouse is the entrance that leads into a yard that used to be a loading dock. An ever shifting array of shipping containers makes it hard for anyone to find their way in and his entrances and exits go unnoticed. "Are we even really sure that Joker's going to pay this any attention?"

Babs is pointedly silent, giving his rhetorical question everything it deserves. The Joker can't let anything go, especially not if it has anything to do with him specifically. A kid is something he's going to pay a whole lot of attention to. What kind of attention is something they're only going to figure out after he's escaped unfortunately.

"I'll see you at the Manor," Babs signs off with, leaving Tim to decide which bakery he's going to be bribing for their first box of pastries.


	4. Chapter 4

They don't make it to the kitchen despite Alfred's subtle encouragement. There's too much information that can't leave the Cave for security reasons. Bruce is still studying the pictures Tim sent him. Going through each one slowly while Alfred circles the table they're gathered at. Checking each one of them over in his own subtle way and edging the plate closer to Bruce. Centimeter by centimeter until it's pressing into his elbow. Only then does he reach for the bagel on it.

"Must we test them all?" Damian asks. Irritated even in the face of frosted doughnuts with sprinkles. The only child that Tim has ever met who can manage that. Tim wonders if the boy has to work at that or if it comes naturally to him. "I still do not understand _why_ we are looking for this person."

Which is a fair point. The person hasn't actually done anything wrong as far as they can tell. Their DNA isn't in any database at least, and while that's not an indication of innocence it's a pretty safe assumption to make.

"To save them," Bruce says without looking away from the pictures. He's already memorized the faces and probably has names and addresses for half of them. He's not looking to remember them now though. He's looking for _resemblance_.

"There's already a bounty out," Babs says. He tablet flicking through a feed that she keeps one eye on as she alternates between a plain bagel smeared with cream cheese, and one of the pink frosted doughnuts that he's sure was put in the box just because the baker he dealt with is kind of an asshole. "Penguin wants a name and is paying decently for it."

"It will increase," Bruce says and finally sets the photos down. His bagel is gone and Alfred is already replacing it. Beginning his subtle encouragement with the plate again. Tim almost smiles at it before he realizes his mug of coffee has been replaced with some kind of juice when he wasn't looking. "Once word gets out about exactly _who_ he's looking for."

"He's fishing," Tim drinks his juice without complaint. He's sufficiently caffeinated enough that he can hold off on sneaking over to the pot for more. Even though the tartness of his drink doesn't go well with the sugar of the single glazed doughnut he'd been quick to snatch up. "Looking to get as much info as he can for cheap."

"Information is not harmful," Damian points out and reaches for the box again. Not seeming to care which one he gets and not commenting about the wide array of colors in the box. He's in a good mood then. Tim theorizes that his weekend with the Titans had really not been going very well when he was called back. "What are we saving this person from?"

"The people who would pay Penguin a lot of money to try and exact revenge on Joker by killing his child," Bruce leans back in his chair and laces his finger together, looking at them all over his hands. Grim and already planning for when they're not fast enough to interfere in time even as he's bringing them together to make sure they _will_ find this person. "The people who've been hurt by Joker and aren't thinking right. Only thinking of revenge."

"Pointless," Damian sniffs in disdain but doesn't elaborate on what he thinks is pointless. Them trying to save someone, or revenge against someone not involved in the Joker's crimes. 

Huh, now there's a thought. Tim props his head on his right hand and frowns down at the table. Thumb tracing a few nearly invisible scratches on the surface. He breaches the one topic they've managed to avoid talking about until now. "Are we going to assume that Joker doesn't know he has a child?"

It's not impossible, there's a lot of men in the world who don't know they have kids. It's hard to imagine Joker not knowing something about it though. The man's insanity in no way prevents him from being very much aware of the world around him. In some ways he's even more aware of it than most people are. Able to predict events and make terrifying leaps in logic that most people wouldn't even consider.

Bruce is silent. His eyes narrowed in thought as he turns the possibility over and matches it up with everything he knows. Out of all of them, he's the one who knows Joker best. It's not something Bruce likes, but it is a burden he insists on trying to carry alone each and every single time.

"With what we know," Babs puts a doubtful spin on that last word because what they know is a lot, but how much of it might be the truth is iffy, "I doubt he knows. Family is something," Babs grimaces and waves a hand in the air. Trying and failing to pick out an appropriate word to use. "Family means _something_ to him. Depending on how old they are...."

Babs doesn't say it, but Tim imagines Joker getting his hands on an actual child. Someone young and very impressionable. He shudders a little at the thought.

"Speculation is useless," Bruce says and Alfred snorts as he clears the used plates. Tim bites back a smirk because he knows, they all do, that Bruce is already speculating every possible reaction for every scenario possible. He just won't share any of it with them until later. "We'll concentrate on finding the source of the DNA first."

"Dick is on his way back," Babs offers up, she nods at her tablet. Tim can't help noticing her mug has a tell-tale curl of steam coming from it, and wonders why he's the only one without coffee. "He picked Cass up."

Bruce's eyes narrow in a protest he won't actually voice. Not if he doesn't want to deal with Cass giving him her surprisingly effective hurt look. He can think that he doesn't need all their help all he wants, but as long as he doesn't actually _say_ it Tim figures they're all good.

"I'll talk to Steph," Tim offers though he's not actually going to take 'no' as an answer. She's on his way to Saint Aden's anyway. Although.... "You'll need to talk to Colin," Tim directs to Damian and get's an exaggerated eye-roll for his efforts. Tim's not sure if that's Dick or Colin's influence but it's almost adorable. Even with the sneer that makes Tim want to strangle the brat. "Jason?"

"I'll do it," Babs interrupts as Bruce opens his mouth. To offer or deny. Either one an equally bad idea. "He already has to know something about it."

Jason's network is almost as good as Babs' most days.

"Shall we run down these people then, sir?" Alfred asks with a nod at the pictures. The 'we' as loud as anything else that he wants Bruce to stay behind for a while. Tim knows that as soon as they all leave the older man is going to do his level best to get Bruce into one of the spare cots for some sleep. Something he only feels the need to do when Bruce has been going for more than 48 hours.

"I'll send results as we get them," Bruce says, and it's not a complete capitulation. He might go down for an hour or two, but Tim knows Batman is going to be hitting the streets hard before noon. Scaring he life out of everyone in the day more than he ever does at night. There's something about the cowl that is more impressive under the sun than it is in the dark.

Probably the ingrained superstition of Gotham that Batman only comes out at night.

"Well then," Babs says and doesn't move away from the table. Just flicks her eyes over Tim and Damian in a silent and obvious dismissal.

He knew there was something more to her visit than just sitting in on a fairly short planning session. One that ended how Tim predicted it would; they needed to find more information.

"I'll get going then," Tim rises, already planning on the civilian clothes he's going to wear for the day. Something low key, that won't scream Timothy Drake-Wayne on the street.

He stops behind Damian's chair and gets an arm around him. Ignoring the way the boy goes stiff and lashes out for a nerve strike that Tim blocks almost unconsciously. "Drake," Damian growls but goes easily enough, for Damian at least, as Tim herds him up the stairs and away from the discussion that Babs doesn't want them to be there for.

"Let the adults talk," Tim says just to annoy him, and he leans back from vicious backwards kick as he herds the boy upstairs. "Get changed and I'll drop you off at Colin's."

"I do not," Damian manages to get a sharp snap in at Tim's left wrist that he feels as a tingle of sensation before the pain blooms though it, "require an escort."

"As long as the sun is up you do," Tim says and leaves the boy to follow him or not. He'll track him down after he changes to prevent him from doing something entirely stupid to satisfy his prickly pride. "There's going to be a lot of people in the area today looking for information or missed evidence. They _will_ notice if you show up on a motorcycle by yourself."

Damian doesn't answer but Tim can feel the glare trying its best to bore through his armor, and knows that not even six months ago he'd be dodging some projectile along with it. Also, he'd have to break out the sedatives to keep Damian from running off just to prove he could. The _strong_ sedatives that are his own formula, and that he doesn't keep in the Cave.

Steph had caught Damian quietly and methodically going through everything they kept in the Cave a few months back. Building up immunities and figuring out how to function while under some of them. An action that both impresses and terrifies Tim just a bit.

"Five minutes," Tim calls back over his shoulder, because they are still under a clock here. "Bring anything you might need in a school bag. You can pretend to be going to a sleepover or something."

The words he hears floating through the hall behind him really don't bear repeating.


	5. Chapter 5

Steph is looking over a list of names already when Tim lets himself into her apartment. Damian is off, getting into all sorts of trouble with Colin whom they’d found already getting himself into trouble with some muscle Tim’s fairly sure can be traced back to Cobblepot.

"Want to split the list?" He asks as he picks up the remnants of her breakfast/dinner and dumps it into the trash in her kitchen. An apple core and half a dozen different types of yoghurt. The email obviously interrupted her as she was debating between a bag of popcorn and some ramen noodles.

Tim takes the popcorn out and tries not to breathe in the powdered cheese on them as he takes a handful. Steph’s hand eventually digs in for her own fistful but her eyes don’t move from the screen of her laptop.

"What’s wrong?" Tim doesn’t bother asking how much she knows. It’s all spelled out on the screen in Babs’ shorthand. She would have been alerted the same time Tim was last night. This is just elaboration for her.

"You think the kid knows?" Steph asks and he doesn’t need to track her eyes to know she’s focusing in on the really young children on the list. There’s a lot of them, and Damian will be going for most of them with Colin’s help. He already knows most of them and getting a little DNA from them won’t be hard with the two boys doing the asking.

Steph reaches out and nearly touches the screen over a cut out image of a girl with pigtails. Two or three years old and Tim waits patiently for her to ask the question that he’s prepared to answer. She won’t ever ask about her daughter, but Tim’s ready for it. Just in case she does.

"Probably not," Tim rubs his fingers together to flick off the cheese that’s gathered in the ridges of his fingertips.

Steph snorts and leans back, reaching for more popcorn. “It’d be great if they never had to find out.”

"It would," Tim agrees. He can’t imagine what this kind of information will do to a kid, but he knows that it’s not a choice that any of them get to make at this point. "The police are combing the street and talking to people already. Reporters are already starting to swarm the place."

Tim had to dodge a few of the more perceptive cameramen who had looked beyond the worn clothes Tim has on now when he walked the street. There’s nothing left to look at, but he’d felt compelled to check to be sure anyway.

"Babs says there’s a lot of bounties out now," Steph switches tabs and Tim can see a few of the prices being thrown around on her screen as she whistles. Low and impressed sounding even as her face screws up in disgust. "That’s a lot of money for the head of someone who’s never done anything."

Tim glances at the name attached to that bounty and shrugs. “Joker killed his son and his family. Two toddlers,” it hadn’t been a pretty case for anyone, but nothing dealing with the Joker ever really did.

"So what?" Steph flips her ponytail over one shoulder and sneers at the screen in a way that Tim knows means Batgirl is going to be visiting some people later in the night. "That gives him the right to become the exact same murderer as Joker?"

Tim doesn’t answer, because it’s a nonargument that he’s not going to contest. “Split the list?”

"Yeah," Steph sighs and shuts the laptop before giving him an entirely theatrical pout. "I mean, I was only planning on paying back that massive sleep debt I’ve been building up for the past few months, but that can wait. It’s not like the interest on it is going to kill me."

"Much," Tim smirks back at Steph because they’ve actually accrued about the same amount of sleep debt lately. Her area of Gotham has been pretty active lately. The Russian mafia trying to muscle their way into areas largely controlled by street gangs, and neither side going for anything subtle or easy. "How many heads did you crack last night?"

"Not enough," Steph rocks left and then right before throwing herself forward. Using the momentum to stumble out of the cushions she’d sunk into. She doesn’t stumble like she used to just a year ago. Her training has gotten really intense and clumsiness isn’t something that occasionally happens to her anymore. Not even when she’s exhausted. "Let me get dressed and put my war paint on first. You need any?"

"Do I?" Tim tilts his head up so the light hits his face fully and Steph looks him over critically for the telling dark bruises of sleeplessness and their fights.

"Eh, you could use a little here," Steph pokes at the soft skin under his right eye. "It’s not bad though, so if you want a little street look to use then you’ll be fine, but if you’re going for you public persona you’ll need some concealer."

"I’ll skip it," Tim decides after some debate. Drawing attention with his public persona won’t help at all, and he doesn’t think he’ll be in civilian clothing for much longer anyway. "Coffee?"

"Please," Steph pulls away with an annoyed look that speaks volumes about how stupid of a question that is. "Just don’t make it strong enough to melt my concealer off."

~

Damian has the majority of the samples by noon. The children mostly stuck in Saint Aden’s under a police guard that isn’t all that subtle. It can’t be. Not for how large it has to be to keep the growing crowd of news cameras and paparazzi out. Babs reports on talks of trying to quietly evacuate the entire orphanage until the tests the police are running can be finished.

They’re being given priority but it’s still going to be several hours before anything can be found out. On the legal end that is. Tim listens as Alfred calmly eliminates each child. Damian took samples from every one of them before going wider in his search.

"Abuse reports there are a lot of people watching the building that are not reporters or police," Damian says after going silent for a few minutes. He’s on his cellphone and walking the street. Tim can hear the faint background noise of pedestrians under his voice. "They are not making a move. Yet."

"They’re waiting for the results," Babs muses. "There’s no money to be made trying to do the work themselves. Just in grabbing the kid before the police can move them."

Which means there’s going to be a fight if the police go through with their plans to move the orphans. Tim grimaces and lets himself into another empty apartment. Julio Medina is at work like most of the people Tim’s been tracking down. Unlike most of them he lives alone which takes some of the guesswork out of gathering samples. He seems too old to be a serious contender in this, but assuming has never led to anything good in Tim’s experience.

"I need to make a drop off," Steph says from her route. She’s only three blocks away from Tim now, and is closer to Damian.

"Give me fifteen minutes," Alfred says. He’s at the Wayne Tech building. The equipment is slightly less sophisticated from what is available in the Cave, but the location is ideal for the runs the man has to make to pick up the samples they’re all procuring.

Also, there’s a lot of grad students perfectly willing to engage in a challenging day of speed DNA testing without asking too many questions. As long as they’ve got a steady supply of pizza they’re pretty golden. Tim can hear the faint strains of some obnoxious pop song in the background of Alfred’s feed.

"Ten," Bruce cuts in from the Cave where he’s been doing the hard work of actually comparing all of the results. It’s the first Tim’s heard from the man in the last hour. "I’ll pick them up on my way in."

"Relocating?" Tim asks after swabbing a toothbrush that looks like it’s a few years past its usefulness. He’s tempted to take the brush just to force Medina to buy a new one but restrains himself.

"It’s a bit soon to be testing that new uplink to the Cave," Babs states, a cautious question without actually questioning anything.

Tim stores his samples and lets himself out of the apartment while he waits for Bruce's response. He has enough time to get one more person off his list before the man comes through if he hurries. Bruce is silent though. Pointedly so, and it's only a few more seconds before Babs responds. Voice flat and utterly devoid of anything, "Oh, I see."

"What?" Tim takes a back stairwell, keeping his head down and the hood on his sweater up. Doing his best to look like just another teenager slinking away from home.

"I don't like that tone," Steph says and she's probably getting to the tail end of her last caffeine hit to sound that cross. "Nothing good ever comes from that tone. What's going on now?"

"It would appear," Alfred offers when neither Bruce nor Babs say anything fast enough, "that the _fine_ people of the news have got wind of the matter."

Inevitable but Tim still winces and can hear Steph's groan. "Which one?"

It's Babs that answers this time, and Tim can hear the weariness lurking in her voice, " _All_ of them."


	6. Chapter 6

Babs isn't kidding.

"Crap," Steph breathes as they look out over the absolute _circus_ that the streets have become. The area is practically gridlocked for five whole blocks around the orphanage and the scene of the shooting.

There's the expected news crews and reporters. There's vans and cameras and more helicopters than is probably safe for the area. Even after the GPD got their own up in the air to chase them away. Expected for any sort of news of this magnitude even if some of the stations Tim catches sight of shouldn't have been able to make it into Gotham as fast as they did.

There's protestors too. People with signs and chants and ugly looks on their faces. Tim's not close enough to hear what they're saying, but he doesn't need to actually hear to know what they're going for. The police are subtly edging closer to them as the crowds get thicker and Tim can practically smell the riot getting ready to break out.

The police are doing a bad job of keeping anyone under any sort of control except for the area directly around Saint Adens, and they're only holding that because the orphanage is one of the _old_ buildings. One of the ones with its own fence that'd take a tank to tear down. Something that very well might happen if the protestors get tired of just yelling.

In between them all are the people, individually or in groups, too calm and collected to be anything good. Their eyes all trained on the building and cellphones to their ears. Keeping tack of the progress and ready to act. Tim recognizes a few faces, and his shoulders itch from the faces he _isn't_ seeing down there in the streets.

"Idiots," Damian hisses. Not for the first time as he paces in a tight circle a few roofs over. Impatient to _move_ and do something. "Do they think protesting is going to do anything?"

"I think logic's packed up and fled for Florida," Steph says and ducks back into the shadows with Tim when the hum of a helicopter gets too close. It's harder to hide in the day, but they all have plenty of practice at it. It helps that the media is still focused on the orphanage and not on trying to spot vigilantes on rooftops. "They don't care if it makes sense. They just want to be angry and be here when the first punch gets thrown."

"Which should be soon," Babs says and Tim can see the reaction rippling through the streets below long before the first bus creeps into view.

It's big, armored, and on loan from Blackgate. The prison transports are _made_ for this kind of situation, and Tim would feel a lot better about the whole plan if they weren't thinking about putting children in them.

"Such a bad idea. Just imagine one of those tipping over," Steph says and taps her grapple hook against the palm of her hand. "Who's the good idea fairy who came up with this plan again?"

"Doesn't matter now," Babs replies. Tim watches as the crowd reluctantly gives way to the buses. A few bold people rushing them to bang ineffectively at the sides before one of the escorting force can push them back from it. "It's _our_ plan now, and we're going to make sure it works. Isn't that right, RH?"

"You suck," Jason snorts, and his irritation practically _drips_ through the comm line. Tim imagines he can smell the odor of the sewers come through too as the older man does his part escorting the children and staff through the pre-cleared tunnels under the streets. "Why couldn't you have gotten Little Red to do the shepherding and let me have some fun busting heads in up top?"

"Because we might need you to play mole for us," Babs replies with no hint of remorse.

"Again," Steph mutters to Tim though her words are clearly picked up by the comm.

"Fuck off, BG," Jason says with surprisingly little real heat. Steph's little problem with gangs has spilled into Red Hood's territory often the past month, and the two have --unsurprisingly-- gotten along rather well together. After the initial beat down that seems inevitable when two masks work together for the first time. "You weren't complaining when I handed you the Arseti boys all tied up nice and pretty for you. Show me some fucking gratitude."

Steph smothers a bout of giggles, but her mouth stretches wide in a grin and Tim has no doubt Jason is being very literal right now. He's seen the man use rope and zip-ties the way some people use gift wrap and bows.

"Out of morbid curiosity," Tim asks as the first bus inches toward the orphanage gates. Slower and slower as the crowd starts to refuse to give, and packs in around the gate itself despite the police pushing back. "How many nuns are sizing you up for a beating right now?"

"Just the one," Jason fires back and Tim hopes the man is wearing his full face mask, because he’s got to be wearing a shit eating grin on his face. The one that makes everyone take a swing at him. "But she’s in the rear and can’t reach me over all these tiny little heads with her ruler. So ju- Son’uva bitch!"

"What?" Babs cuts in. Loud and demanding as Tim tenses and Steph goes silent. They’re too far away for them to reach Jason in time to be any help. There's no way they can get down into the sewers through the teaming crowd below. Tim is already plotting out a course to try anyway. "Red Hood!"

"Fuck! Ow, nothing, O," Jason says quickly. There’s a rustling sound that only comes when Jason forgets he’s wearing the full helmet. Tim relaxes a little and waits for further explanation. "Jesus fuck, that witch has good fucking aim."

Steph makes a sound and Tim bites his tongue hard. Damian doesn’t bother hiding anything and his vicious glee comes through loud and clear. “You were just hit in the head by a ruler.”

"Fuck _off_ brat," Jason swears again before going absolutely silent. He's not grumbling when he speaks again. "We're at the pick up point."

"Everything is in place," Babs assures him. "Let them up on the street. How are the decoys?"

"Rocking," Steph says, and they are. There's a crowd pushing against both sides of the last bus in the convoy, and they're pushing hard. The bus hasn't lost contact with the road yet on either side, but there's more people coming in. Adding weight and momentum to the action. "Someone is going to get crushed. Do we have to save them?"

"That's the job we signed up for," Tim says and ignores the snort from Damian as he watches the gate to the orphanage slowly start to open. The crowd surges and there's no way the police are going to keep them from busting through. "Gate's opening. You're about to get company, B."

"Get the crowd away from the buses," Bruce says. His voice is flat but dark, and Tim almost wants to get into the orphanage now. Just so he can see the looks on the first wave of people who bust in and find Batman looming there. Angry and ready to educate them on what a bad idea it was to get out of bed that morning. "Try to control them as much as you can."

Damian doesn't hesitate. He's a blur over the crowd aiming at the bus that's picking up momentum. "Right," Steph drawls before leaping over the edge after him.

Tim takes his time to look over the streets again. The crowd is already reacting to Robin's presence. Some backing away, most just looking at the boy in stupid shock. The colors of his uniform are blindingly bright in the light of the sun, and it's painfully clear just how young he is now with no shadows to hide the baby fat rounding his face out. More of the crowd backs away. The ones not completely caught up in the mob mentality and who are probably remembering the age of the kids they've been screaming for.

People are slipping into the gap of the gate now. Not protestors though, and Tim can see more than a few guns get pulled as the men split up almost immediately. News crews are turning to film the unsettled crowd, and all the cameras turn to Robin standing tall and proud on the bus. A few turn to the blur of movement that's Batgirl coming in.

He grins as the cameras almost immediately shake and turn. The men and women holding them looking at their non functioning equipment in obvious confusion. "Nice work, O. I don't think any of the cameras are working."

"I do what I can," Babs says with no hint of humility. Gun shots ring through the air and the crowd reacts to the sound of danger. There's no organization anymore, and the police are focusing on getting the buses away. They've given up on the pretext of guarding the building. "Phones will still work for the most part. Watch yourself RR."

"Sure," Tim picks out an angry looking man who's been screaming the loudest among the protestors. He looks vaguely familiar and is most likely here for revenge for something Joker did to him. It doesn't really matter. The man has a few obvious bulges under his jacket that he's reaching for, and a gun goes skidding across the street when Tim lands on him. Knocking him out is easy, but the half dozen people that've surrounded the man all day are clearly not happy to see Red Robin there.

Tim snaps open his bo and smiles grimly at them all. Screams of pain rise up from the crowds around the buses, and he can't see Robin or Batgirl. "I always watch myself."


	7. Chapter 7

Tim's just getting into the groove of fighting when the riot breaks as quickly as it had started. He comes down on a man's arm and feels the bone snap before he's spinning away for another target that isn't there. He's gone down an alley away from the orphanage, chasing the more dangerous looking people to prevent them from turning things deadly. He's surrounded by whimpering and cowering people who flinch back from him as he walks. People stream by both ends of the alley, and Tim watches as a group of white faced people turn in to use it but abruptly abort their move when they see him there.

The street outside the orphanage is eerily empty when he gets back to it. Small groups of people scuttle past him. Their eyes darting away superstitiously from him as they go. One of the buses is still there, tipped on its side, but the others are no where in sight. Steph paces along the side of the bus facing upward like it's a catwalk. Glaring at the people who pause close to her until they run. Tim doesn't see any sign of the reporters or the police.

"Things look clear on the street," Tim reports and Steph turns to nod at him. She jumps down easily from the bus to meet him. Her boots are scuffed and her left glove has an odd stain on it that he doesn't even try to figure out. "As clear as it can."

The street is a mess. Doors and lower windows are smashed out all down it. They're mostly apartment buildings in this area, and Tim can see the gaps in the curtains on the upper levels of them. Invisible eyes peer through them at the street below, and Tim hopes the people on the lower levels were smart enough to head upward when this all started. There's a smattering of damage from the guns none of them had been fast enough to take out of the picture, but at least there are no still bodies on the ground waiting for a bodybag. 

"Robin's inside," Steph says with a tilt of her head to the orphanage which is absolutely ruined. The fence has survived but not much inside of it has fared as well. Tim frowns at the ruin of what he'd always thought was a pretty good selection of equipment and toys for the kind of orphanage it was. 

"We still have people inside," Babs says and Steph immediately turns to stride in. Tim follows close behind and scans for movement in the broken out windows. "Third floor, rear section."

"You take left?" Steph tosses the question at him even as she starts jogging the other way.

Tim shrugs and turns left. Taking off at a slow jog so he can still scan the windows. He doesn't see any movement, but he hears the tell-tale echo of something heavy being thrown as he goes over a line of storage sheds that've been set in a line to block off the back courtyard area. There are bodies lying on the ground when he turns the corner a split second before Steph. Glass glitters around them and Tim's willing to bet the bodies are lined up in a perfect trajectory from the area Tim recalls is kind of like a gym.

"Do you even need us?" Steph asks with an exaggerated sigh. She's halfway through one of the windows but Tim can still see the flash of Damian's vivid green uniform.

"No," Batman strides out of the broken double doors and surveys the yard. It's a trick of the mind but Tim still thinks the whole yard darkens with his presence. Batman belongs to the night and everyone is conditioned to it. "These are the last."

"Did we learn anything from them?" Steph asks, her voice floating out because she's climbed in all the way. "All I got were really badly informed people trying to run away. Hey, reel it back Baby Bat!"

Tim can hear a muffled sound that only his many years as a vigilante allows him to interpret as the sound of reinforced boots thudding into soft flesh. A few months of knowing Damian in any capacity fills out the rest of the unseen picture and Tim doesn't feel compelled to check further on it. He follows after Bruce instead as the man stalks away.

"The children," Bruce demands as he shoots off the grapple Tim didn't see him pull out.

"Safe," Babs responds immediately. Her words sharp enough to let him know she's running off four or six different feeds right now. Probably running interference with all the things getting uploaded to the internet from this little event. "RH is off comm right now, running interference on the docks. The kids are already out of the city."

On their way to Metropolis which has several well-funded orphanages that have been very happy to take the kids in for a while. Tim swings up over onto the roof Bruce is inhabiting now and pauses even as the man keeps going. He's got a destination in mind, but Tim's going to wait for Steph and Damian before following. He rolls his right shoulder back and feels the slight resistance that means he's going to have to take care with it or the next few days are going to be painful for him. 

He hates baseball bats sometimes.

"How are the tests coming along?" He asks as he watches Steph chase out a visibly fuming Damian. The boy is taking this hard, and Tim doesn't blame him for the extra kicks he's delivering to the downed muscle.

"Finished," Alfred cuts in smoothly, and Steph and Damian go still on the ground. They all wait in silent anticipation. "None of the children are a match."

Tim sighs in relief even as he feels disgusted at the senseless violence that is even more senseless now. They don't have the blood sample to run tests against, but just about every system in the world has a sample of the Joker's DNA. Running paternity tests is adding time to a test that already is pretty lengthy in the first place. Tim thinks that time is going to lead to more destruction and harm before this thing is over with. 

"Run the other samples," Bruce says. It's infinitesimal, but the tightness that's been chasing the man is eased. Just that last, smallest bit.

"Already started," Alfred says in a tone of voice that's not so slightly scornful. "I dare say those shall be done by the time you return as well."

"Good," Bruce replies and Tim hears the sound of approaching sirens. Ambulances, because the police have to already be nearby somewhere. There's probably a blockade nearby that they fell back on with the buses that didn't get tipped. "We'll go from there."

~

Tim remembers when getting into the WE tower used to be a challenge. One that had everything to do with the unpredictability of the employees. Now it doesn't even matter if they're seen or not. People _expect_ them it seems, and Tim's not entirely sure he'll ever get used to the wide-eyed looks of amazement he gets when he runs into them on the rarely used stairs.

"Isn't there a smoking area?" Steph asks with a smirk that makes it all a joke even as the interns scramble to stub out the cigarette's they'd both smelled as soon as they started up the stairs. Her hand is heavy on the small of his back. Pushing him even as he wants to stop and freak the men out. Just a bit because finding the people too lazy to go down a few dozen flights of stairs --there's an elevator so there's no excuse-- has been something he's been wanting to do for a month.

"Sorry, sorry! We'll just, uh," one of the men manages to stutter out before trailing off as Steph doesn't let up on her pushing, and they leave the men behind in a matter of seconds. 

Tim turns his head to frown at her but doesn't say anything even as they both hear the furious whispering that starts up. The conversation carries really well in the stairwell and Steph just grins back at him until they reach the floor of the lab.

"You can set up a camera to chew them out about it later," she promises as soon as the door is shut. The floor is quieter than it usually is at this time of the day, and Tim wonders if the employees have been let go early after the frenzy of testing. "We've got bigger asses to chew right now."

"Nice image, BG," Dick says and Tim looks up to see the man hanging out of a door down the hall. He's grinning but Tim knows his mask is going to be hiding some major bags. He's spent the past fourteen hours in flight after all. Even after picking Cass up, Tim doubts the man would have given up the controls to her. It's just the way he is. "I'm sure it's going to haunt me for weeks to come. Thanks for that."

Alfred's touch is evident in the conference room. There's food and coffee and bottled water laid out on a side-table because the oval table is covered in files. The paperwork generated by all the testing scattered everywhere. Bruce is looking through the computer reports though. Damian is curled up on a chair in the corner. His booted feet propped up on the wall and cape wrapped around him as he sleeps. The boy is better at catching naps than any of them combined, and Tim's more than a little envious of that ability.

Cass has made herself a little spot on the table to sit on. She's cross-legged and methodically working her way through a monster mash of three different sandwiches. She smiles at him with her eyes and tilts her head towards Steph.

"Please tell me we've gotten incredibly lucky and found our guy," Steph slides into a seat close to Cass and aims her pleading to the pointed ears of Bruce's cowl. Firmly in place even though WE is almost as secure as the Cave. He doesn't look up from the computer but the lines around his mouth go a little tighter. Steph groans and slumps over the table. Her bright hair flipping over Cass' closest knee. "Of course not. We're never lucky."

Dick doesn't chime in with a poor joke about getting lucky which speaks loudly about his level of alertness. Tim himself doesn't even try to sit down. The chairs in the room are well-padded and he knows himself enough to know he'll be joining Damian if he tries to sit in them. Tiredness is tugging gently at him now that the adrenaline of a riot isn't running through him.

"We don't have much else at this time," Babs' voice doubles oddly. Coming through the comm and the tiny speakers of the laptop. "The police are just starting to chase down the leads we've checked out, and all the other players are spinning their wheels looking for any rumor."

"You said Red Hood was running interference," Tim says, his eyes flickering over the printed papers he can see. "What for?"

"A rumor got going that the children were going to be moved out over the water to keep them safe," Babs says with a snort. "He went to bust the morons looking to check every shipping container leaving, and put his name out there as someone _very_ interested in finding the Joker's kid."

Red Hood's absolute hatred of Joker is something that is well known in the city. Having him throwing in for the hunt won't raise any eyebrows even though it should. It's a good tactic and Tim thinks that was what Babs had wanted to discuss with Bruce privately. It's not the kind of plan the man would trust unless it came from him first after all.

"Alert me if he finds anything," Bruce says as he shuts the top of the laptop with a final click. He sits back in his seat and there's just enough of a slump in his posture for Tim to know that even he's running close to empty. Which means he was due for some much needed rest hours before the DNA match was made yesterday. "We can't do anything until something gets shaken loose."

The admission is grudging and Tim grimaces at it even as he agrees. "We have about five or six hours before night falls. We'll probably get more leads then."

Or find more rumors to stomp out. Which amounts to the same thing really. Rumors lead to dead ends a lot, but sometimes they turn up truth too.

"Get some sleep," Bruce orders and it's not something he has to repeat for once.


	8. Chapter 8

For all that the street is alive with rumors and people hunting for a person no one has seen, Red Robin's night begins with him busting up an average drug deal. The world could be burning and there will still be a large number of people who ignore it to go on with their lives.

It's a bit refreshing bouncing the heads of two men off a brick wall and not having to think about if they're misinformed or taking money to hunt someone down. A bad sign that this case is going to be a really bad one since it's only been two days.

"Ten million," Babs tells him when he checks in to report the location of the trussed up dealers for pick up.

"Penguin," Tim guesses even though he doubts the man would offer that much. It's a lucrative business deal waiting to happen, but way too high for Cobblepot to start off with for something that really isn't much of a guarantee. The man is a savvy business man if nothing else. 

"Luthor," Babs corrects wearily and Tim wonders if she'd gotten any rest at all, or if she'd reasoned herself into staying up to keep track of things.

"What does he want in Gotham?" Tim asks. It's a rhetorical question because the man has a lot of interest in Gotham. Some legitimate, some not legitimate, some good, and some based purely on revenge. They all know that though and Babs doesn't answer him.

"Can you a handle putting out a fire at the docks?" Babs asks after Tim's headed off.

"Again?" Tim alters his path to take him to whee he stashed his bike for the night.

"Again," she confirms. "People just aren't getting the news that the rumor there is old news."

Awesome. Tim sighs and acknowledges the change in plan. Cracking heads in his territory or the docks, it's all the same really.

~

"Tell me you have a bruise at least," Tim says when he arrives at the docks twenty minutes later and finds the fire already well in hand. 

Red Hood is idly kicking a groaning lump of muscle and stupidity, and doesn't seem surprised at all to see him there. Jason's wearing his domino tonight and the familiar mask is nowhere to be seen. It gives him a nice view of his teeth when he grins at him. "I have no idea what you're on about, Red."

He knows that Tim is asking about the nun and the flying ruler, but he's going to be deliberately obtuse about it because he knows how much it annoys Tim.

A few shipping containers have been smashed open and some of the contents dragged out. It's clear that this group here was using the rumors from yesterday as an excuse to loot. Tim crosses his arms over the handlebars of his bike and leans his chin on them to stare down at the mostly unconscious men. The docks are silent and still which means he's wasted time coming out for nothing. "Had any bites on your offer yet?"

"Plenty," Jason aims three vicious kicks on his way over to Tim that leaves all of the men unconscious now. He slouches on a rusted post next to Tim and scans the docks just like Tim already has. "Lots of fuckers want to make a few bucks off of this, but they're not even able to come up with a halfway decent lie to try selling me."

"What do they even think you're going to do with the kid when you get them?" Tim asks out of morbid curiosity, because Jason's got a fierce and deadly rep on the street but everyone knows the man doesn't hurt kids. No matter who their parents might be.

"Fuck if I know," Jason shrugs but he's smiling a little and Tim knows he's pleased that Tim's asking because it wasn't all that long ago that they all would have thought something very different about Jason. To be fair, when Jason first came back he probably was angry enough to try something. Tim doesn't think he would have gone through with it though. He's probably one of the few people who would think that though. The moment passes fast and Jason frowns a bit before going forward. "We don't even know it is a kid do we? All the ones we know about turned out not being matches. Maybe Joker got started early and was a teenage dead-beat baby daddy."

Which is a good point. A disturbing point, but a point still.

~

The rest of the night goes by like that. Babs feeds them all a constant stream of updates and problem areas that don't amount to a whole lot. The rest of the world is as in the dark as they are in this matter. It's frustrating but also a blessing in disguise. At least they're not trying to race some unknown enemy to an unknown target. A nice change in pace for once.

Unfortunately, if the rest of his night went by normally, his daytime life has to pick back up too. Tim's made his excuse for yesterday, and is officially out of acceptable reasons to skip out on work for a month now. Not without doing more damage to his public persona than it's worth.

He gets a solid five hours of sleep after the fruitless night and shows up to start cranking out files and signatures bright and early. Tam doesn't give him as much flak as he'd expected. The news of the riot is becoming old now, but the damage is still being reported on. The anchors focusing in on the destruction of the orphanage and laying heavily onto the fact that none of the children --who had to be evacuated for their safety-- where matches. 

"It's times like this that I think the media isn't all that bad," Tim comments as he finally mutes the program that he's been paying only partial attention to. The guilt trip being televised is really raking in the cash being raised to fix the place up. Tim has no doubts that St. Adens will be fixed up to be better than it was before. "But then I remember how annoying they can be and how often they make facts up."

"Or how often they chase down the right facts that you don't want the world to know about," Tam points out as she gathers up some of the files he's finished with and replaces them with more work. She's being nice and feeding it all to him slowly.

"Just the facts that will end in death," namely _his_ which is a compelling argument that she doesn't have an argument against.

"You have a lunch meeting to approve some prototypes," Tam says as she pulls out a single sheet from under the files to spin in front of him. It's a timeline for his day as well as the rest of the week. Everything she's had to rearrange have been typed in a vivid red. All capslock too. "You have fifteen to actually eat before you have a bunch of face to face meetings with people from PR about those marketing photos."

Tam lists off the kind of terrifying array of meetings and times that he has to meet, and Tim grits his teeth because he knew this was coming the minute he woke her up to tell her to make excuses for him yesterday.

~

The day blurs by and Tim only manages to get a few updates from Babs after lunch that make him pity Dick and Cass who had to go straight to Penguin's place to break up what sounded like the setup to an awful joke of a standoff. The only information to come from that is the fact that Harley Quinn was spotted among the crowd.

It's really only a matter of time before Joker gets wind of it now. Harley is a wildcard in this. She loves the Joker one minute and then hates his guts the next. Literally sometimes, and no one can really predict her. In this matter it's only a question of when she'll decide to tell him and Tim knows everything that happens after that is going to be a disaster.

~

Tim's last meeting of the day isn't much of a surprise to him though the slightly disgruntled face of Jim Gordon is always a welcome sight. 

"Commissioner," Tim greets the man who looks like he really could use more than just the cup of coffee he's taken from the pot next to the conference table. This room is one of the windowless ones and is probably the most private one available without going to the labs right now. "How can I help you?"

"You can start by handing over all of the highly illegal testing you've done," Gordon says and it's going to be one of those meetings. The ones where the man verges on admitting out loud the truth that he's always denied knowing. Bruce's admittance of funding Batman helps with the whole plausible deniability thing, but can only really go so far.

"I'd love to help you with that, sir, but the records have already been destroyed," Tim admits truthfully. The digital copies are safe in the Cave's system, but everything else was burned. From the samples gathered to the hard drive used to calculate everything. "And I assure you, our technicians had no idea they were analyzing samples that were not given over willingly."

"I'm sure they didn't," Gordon sighs and tilts the paper cup he's holding up dangerously high as he drains it. He goes to the pot again and slowly starts fixing himself another. It's a mixture of the sensitive information of who Tim really is combined with the high status of Timothy Drake-Wayne that has made it necessary for Gordon himself to come talk to him. If his public persona were just a little lower on the social rungs of importance it'd be a couple of detectives instead. Tim can't say he's disappointed by it though. "You were there when Jules Dane was shot. Do you recall seeing anyone remarkable at the time?"

"Um, not really," Tim tells the truth again but throws in some of the nervously embarrassed socialite in there with it too. Just because it's fun seeing the way Gordon tries hard not to roll his eyes at him. "I was more concerned with not getting blood on my shirt. Dry cleaners are always so gossipy about the smallest hint of blood, and you know how quick reporters will buy up all those rumors."

Tim watches Gordon swallow another half cup and knows Babs is going to get on his case later for it if she hasn't already. An upside to her admittance of her role --the only time Gordon has ever really acknowledged the open secret between the man and the family-- is that she feels no compunction about using her highly invasive network to harp on the older man about his health. An upside to Tim and Dick mostly, because they're no longer her only outlet for when she vents about how she can't take him to task for the _five_ donuts he ate when no one was watching.

"Rumors," Gordon agrees with a dark and rueful tone. The GCPD has been dealing with their own onslaught of fires to put out. On top of what has to be hundreds of people calling with false tips and demands of action.

"Speaking of, will the police department be doing anything to address some of those horrible things that have been airing on the news?" Tim asks, genuinely curious, because a public address will go a long way to calming some of the growing unease in the city. It's building slowly. The city is watching it all unfold cautiously, the way it always seems to when the people are bracing themselves for worse.

"Once there's anything to actually report," Gordon shakes his arm out and looks critically at his watch. "I'm sure you will see the news report as soon as it's made, Mr. Drake. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter."

"I'm always happy to oblige," Tim smiles as Gordon tops off his cup and salutes him with it on his way out. The interview over and something the man can say was done. Tim wonders as he watches Gordon disappear if he'll make up what was said or if he'll just go for the generic 'rich boy didn't see anything past his own designer shirt' excuse that's gotten so many of them out of questioning with an ease that's kind of insulting.

Knowing Gordon that's exactly what he's going to do, because it amuses him like nothing else when people think all the Waynes are stupid.


	9. Chapter 9

Cass finds him when he leaves. Sliding into step with him almost immediately as he walks to his car. She’s carrying a duffle that has her uniform and gear already in it, and Tim waits until the tower is falling away in the rearview mirror before speaking. “Do you need anything from the Manor?”

"No, you have everything we need," she replies and her eyes are fixed on the streets they’re passing through as he turns to his apartment. Tim lets her study and read the people even though he knows she has to have a good read on the city already. It rarely takes her more than a few minutes to reacquaint herself with the people every time she returns.

"They’re, hm, _apprehensive_ ," Cass eventually says, rolling the word over in her mouth like she’s slowly tasting it and agreeing with the meaning as she says it. She’s talking about more than just the strangers walking the streets though when her eyes cut back to him. "You’re not."

"No," not any more than he usually is. "People aren’t their parents," and Tim thinks about Kon, Steph, and Rose. He thinks about every other person he knows who has parents that do things they don’t approve of. Who have parents they’ve _worked_ hard at to show the world they are not like _them_ at all.

He thinks about _Cass_ , and darts his eyes over toward her at a stoplight.

She’s smiling. Easy and like she expected nothing less from him. Tim wonders what she’s been reading in the others since she got back. He has a pretty good idea what Bruce is thinking, maybe Dick too.

"It’s not bad," Cass assures him. "I know they just worry the most."

"They don’t mean it," Tim says even though she doesn’t need the assurance from him. He mentally makes a note to say something to Alfred later though, because it’s easy to forget where Cass came from. Who brought her up. Easy to think she has always been part of the family from the very beginning. She used to scare him, more than just a bit, but Tim can’t imagine not being able to call her his sister now.

"Thank you," Cass says and her fingers are light against his arm for a few blocks.

~

Tim doesn’t think that Cass has ever really faced Poison Ivy before, or if she has he just doesn’t know about it. Cass doesn’t flinch from the vines uncurling from the trunks of the trees to reach out for her. She does step back from them though, not letting them touch her at all.

"A word, Ivy?" Tim requests. Keeping his tone polite and holding his hands open and out. Ivy will respond in kind or she won’t respond at all. She’s one of the few villains who doesn’t respond with aggression to a peaceful approach. Usually.

The park is quiet and still. It’s been almost a year since anyone confirmed a sighting of her in Robinson Park, but this section is still firmly off limits to people. Tim’s gambling that she’s actually even here, and it pays off when he sees the green tint of her eyes staring back at him a split second before she melts out of the shadows.

"You’ll want more than a word," the vines stop trying to reach for Cass and curl back around the trees they came from. A few snake across the ground to curl around Ivy’s calves. "You always do."

"Usually," Tim smiles ruefully and keeps his arms down and lax. It’s hard to remember to keep his guard on his face down too. Ivy always has responded best to complete honesty. Something that has gotten harder to get her to acknowledge as he gets older, and she slowly stops viewing him as a child. Tim knows it won’t be long before she refuses to indulge him when he asks to talk. Which is a shame because that means he’s going to have to somehow coach Damian into talking to the woman, and all of Tim’s thoughts on that possibility end in fire and man-eating plants raging out of control. "I’m just looking for a little information."

"About this mythical child?"

"Honestly? If you have anything on them I haven’t already heard I’d love to hear it," Tim says and Cass’ head tilts in the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look away from Ivy to gauge what she’s thinking right now. "I just want to know when Harley is going to tell _him_."

Because if you want to know anything about Joker you ask Harley, and if you want to know anything about Harley you ask Ivy. The strange almost three-way relationship between them is mind-boggling at times, and Tim’s mostly stopped trying to pick apart how it works and just accepted it to save himself a few headaches.

Ivy frowns and it puts dark green lines in her face as her eyes go distant. Thinking about what she might say, or maybe even _asking_ because Harley hasn’t been seen since the dustup at the Iceberg Lounge.

"She won't," Ivy eventually says, quiet certainty lacing her voice for all that it seems like she's just coming to this conclusion herself right now.

"She won't," Tim repeats and knows his doubt leaks through from the way her eyes narrow before she decides she's more amused than angered.

"No, Harley won't say a word to him. Not about this," Ivy says as she starts to melt back into the shadows. Not asking if he has any further questions. She's done with this conversation. "It's other people you will have to worry about."

"It always is," Tim says and gets a high laugh before she's gone.

"She thinks that is true. So do you," Cass says as they leave the park. Her voice soft over the comm lines in thought as the street blurs past them. She weaves through the light traffic dangerously on her bike. Somewhere between Dick's utter insanity, and Jason's utter recklessness when it comes to riding. "You were. Honest? Open? With her."

"It gets results," Tim replies. Her puzzlement obvious now. "It's not easy for me to do that."

"Not anymore," Cass agrees. She takes a sharp turn and her head turns farther than it needs to in that split second so that Tim knows she's looking at him.

"I've learned better," there's no bitterness in his voice, because Tim's ruthlessly trained himself out of that tell, but Cass has never needed verbal cues to follow.

"You've learned _more_ ," Cass corrects and takes a familiar path that Tim doesn't need to think about to follow. "Not better, just more."

She doesn't talk again as they head towards Oracle and Tim chews over those words for a bit unsure if he agrees with them or not.


End file.
